"Transocean Ltd. has agreed to a nearly $212 million settlement with Gulf Coast individuals and business owners over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, plaintiff's lawyers said Wednesday (May 20)."
The public is not allowed to know the terms of the draft Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact likely to come up for a Senate vote this year. Yet the Senate has already begun voting on terms for considering the treaty, which may allow other nations to override U.S. health, safety, and environmental protection laws. Fortunately, WikiLeaks has already published a leaked version of the environmental chapter of the TPP treaty.
A newly enacted Wyoming law seems to be aimed at criminalizing the collection and reporting of stream pollution or other environmental harm. It creates a unique new category of crime called "data trespass." Just what the law, signed in March by Gov. Matt Mead (R), means or does is being debated hotly.
"Ga. Department of Transportation Commissioner Russell McMurry today denied Kinder Morgan’s application for a public needs certificate. Without it, the energy company cannot condemn property along the proposed 210-mile Palmetto Pipeline route in Georgia."
"With the stroke of his pen, Gov. Greg Abbott may have just made Denton not only the first but also the last city in Texas to ban fracking."
"The oil industry is launching a multimedia advertising campaign tomorrow in opposition to the Obama administration’s attempt to restrict allowable concentrations of ozone pollution."
"Seven environmental groups filed a lawsuit on Thursday challenging safety rules issued earlier this month for trains carrying oil, arguing the regulations are too weak to protect the public."
"As Duke Energy pleaded guilty Thursday in a North Carolina courtroom to nine criminal violations of the federal Clean Water Act, federal prosecutors recounted examples where time and again the nation's largest electricity company failed to prevent its illegal pollution."
A federal judge Wednesday rejected Freedom Industries' bankruptcy proposal and ordered the company to clean up the site where its January 2014 chemical spill contaminated Charleston, W.V., drinking water.
"Enbridge Energy and its affiliates will pay $75 million to settle a 2010 oil spill into Michigan's Talmadge Creek and Kalamazoo River that dumped 800,000 gallons of oil, state officials said on Wednesday."
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